Tomas Garrigue Masaryk

Tomas Garrigue Masaryk (7 March 1850-14 September 1937) was President of Czechoslovakia from 14 November 1918 to 14 December 1935, preceding Edvard Benes.

Biography
Tomas Garrigue Masaryk was born in Hodonin, Moravia, Austrian Empire on 7 March 1850, the son of a coachman on a Habsburg estate. He had a brilliant career at school, which enabled him to attend the universities of Leipzig and Vienna. In 1882, he became professor of philosophy at Prague University, a post he held until 1914. In this position, he developed a theory of critical realism, a mixture of German idealism and Western European positivism, to call for pragmatic policies of social action. He argued strongly against the creation of myths so prevalent in Czech nationalism at the time, but at the same time was a vigorous critic of Austrian and Hungarian imperialism that claimed the Czech lands as part of Austria-Hungary. He was a member of the Austrian imperial council from 1891 to 1893 as a member of the Young Czech Party, and again from 1907 to 1914 as the representative of the Czech Realist Party, which he had founded. Through the creation of a common Czech and Slovak national council in 1915, the organization of a Czechoslovak legion in Russia to fight against Austria-Hungary in 1917, and the achievement of unity among Czech and Slovak emigrant associations in the United States, his ability to unite Czechs and Slovaks made him a pivotal figure in the events leading to Czechoslovakia's independence as a unitary state. As President, the open-minded intellectual epitomized the sophistication, liberal individualism, toleration, cosmopolitanism, concern for justice, and modernity of the country's political elite, and of the self-image of the state as a whole. He retired in 1935 owing to old age, and he died in 1937 at the age of 87.